


Or Perhaps In Slytherin

by arobynsung



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Headcanon, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Meta, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Redemption, Slytherin, Slytherin House, Slytherins Being Slytherins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 19:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3146684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arobynsung/pseuds/arobynsung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'll make your real friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or Perhaps In Slytherin

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning for a brief mention of suicide and canon typical violence and death.

_Or perhaps in Slytherin,_  
_You'll make your real friends._

  
   
1.  
McGonagall sends down her sentence, and a sentence is really what it is, and they follow Filch down to the dungeons. The dungeons feel colder, and it's more than just their being underground.  
   
Pansy Parkinson once more screws up her face, and yes her courage too, and turns to her housemates and continues her bid for survival. She has the upperclassmen direct all third years and below to head for the dorms and barricade the doors. Pansy turns to the windows, places her palms on the cool thick glass and whispers a spell taught to all sixth and seventh year Slytherin prefects to call to the creatures of the lake to hold the foundation and keep the common room from flooding. A mass drowning is the last thing they need, though Pansy morbidly supposes that there is something to be said for cleansing. She misses Draco.  
   
Blaise Zabini and three other upperclassmen paint ancient runes of protection on the walls and seal the entrance to the common room as best they can after Slughorn comes in. Blaise's family is neutral in this war, and his well-connected mother often relayed rumors of both Dumbledore's chequered past and the Dark Lord's suspect muggle origins. Far as he could tell, neither was worth his loyalty, and right now all he had were the Slytherins and a growing sense that no matter which way this war fell, the Slytherins would lose. He pours more power into setting the runic wards.  
  
  
  
2.  
The entrance to the common room falls first despite their efforts and chaos pours in. For the first time in a hundred years, there are non-Slytherin students in their common room, and they are cursing, bleeding, and dying all over the velvet and ancient dark wood.  
   
As many Slytherins as there are with parents and other family in the Death Eaters there are others whose families while not on the side of 'Light', did their best to stay out of it. So it isn't just family who pour into the dungeons thirsty for a kill, it is other Death Eaters, Snatchers, and all manner of dark creatures- and _they_ do not see house colors or kin, just more students to subdue, by any means necessary. Some Death Eater parents grab the children they can find and do their best to escape the battle. Others fall by their own children's wands, as the Slytherins defend themselves, Slughorn leading them and pushing the fight out and back into the corridors.  
  
  
  
3.  
Three students die defending the entrance to the dormitories.  
   
More die in the corridors defending each other. Defending their school.  
   
They are the last bodies to be recovered, and it's the Bloody Baron who has to remind the Aurors to check the basement floors and the dungeons for survivors. They find the first, second, and third years huddled in one dorm, looking pale, hungry and terrified, but still quick enough to take down the first two Aurors who try to walk in the room. They come out only when their older housemates walk them out, faces devastatingly young and fierce, arms linked at the elbows, wands firmly in hand.  
  
  
  
4.  
There are trials of course, in amongst the funerals- the suicidal rate is disproportionately high amongst their families and friends. Summer solstice observances are more memorial than celebration. It is not uncommon for some children to have one or both parents, if not a sibling, either dead, missing, or imprisoned.  
   
Money goes missing from pureblood family accounts- house Malfoy,  Greengrass, Parkinson, Zabini, and Avery- and no Slytherin student or their family is hungry or homeless, regardless of blood status, and despite the Ministry's best efforts.  
   
It is agreed that the last year of British Wizarding education was largely a wash, and all students are encouraged to return to Hogwarts and re-do their last year sans the Cruciatus curse. Owls fly to and from Slytherin students' homes after the announcement and largely by committee an agreement is made to have as many students as possible return.  
   
House Slytherin must be counted.  
  
  
  
5.  
They have the least number of students in first year, despite the necessary increase in cohort size across the school. Tracey Davis thinks they look, small, terrified, and very aware the patently unfair course their life has taken. She implements a mentoring program that ensures that all first and second years have at least two upperclassmen they can call on for help, for any reason. This is supplemented by Theodore Nott's security system that ensures that none of the lower years are never caught anywhere outside Slytherin in groups of less than three without an older Slytherin student in the area. Though not meant for them, it is a buddy system the upperclassmen favor as well, though they'd be hard pressed to call it for what it was.  
   
Headmistress McGonagall's office is broken into within the first month. Nothing is taken. Just that Headmaster Snape's portrait is slashed. This happens twice more before a final break-in occurs and the portrait goes missing.  
   
Enforced close proximity with each other commonly results in tension that often spills over into hexes and jinxes. However this is always handled in-house and in the course of their weekly house meetings it is not necessary to emphasize the united front they must present to the rest of the school.  
   
Professor Slughorn thinks the man in the portrait in pride of place above the fireplace looks approving but he is as unreadable in death as he was in life.  
  
  
  
6.  
No one hires Slytherins for awhile, but Tracey's mentorship program extends beyond Hogwarts, at times beyond international borders, and it isn't as much of a problem as it could have been. There is talk of refurbishing Knockturn Alley for themselves but it is decided that it is more important to move in on Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and disavow the rest of the wizarding world of the notion that Slytherins always go to ground in a crisis.  
   
Theodore Nott's security firm specializes in protective wards and services for privately owned (at first mostly Slytherin) businesses- after the first five years, his reputation is solid enough to secure a contract with Gringotts. Ministry led reparation efforts that leech from a certain number Gringotts vaults find their access lines subsequently dried up.  
   
Astoria Greengrass' boutique presents a modern high fashion muggle-influenced alternative to Madam Malkin's and exclusively styles Penelope Clearwater in her successful bid for Minister of Magic. It is the only ministry connection the wizarding world will bear from the Slytherins for the moment. It will do for now.  
   
There are no Slytherins on Hogwarts' Board of Governors for nine years. The first is a Slytherin muggleborn witch who ensures that Slytherin's mentorship programs are supported and expanded across the school. With credit due Slytherin house for their inception of course.  
  
  
  
7.  
With a few exceptions, most Slytherins, if they do marry, marry outside the house. There is even a Slytherin halfblood who marries a muggle. At King's Cross, the first batch of children born to Slytherin students present at the Battle of Hogwarts boards the Hogwarts Express. Their parents do a final check- wands, winter cloaks, quills, mentorship letter, books, jumpers, pets- and take a collective deep breath when the train departs that is released only when the first letters from their newly sorted children arrive.  
   
They aren't all sorted Slytherin of course, but those who are write home Slytherin and proud.  
 

  
-  
_Those cunning folk use any means_  
_To achieve their ends._  
-  
  


**Author's Note:**

> None of this is meant to imply that all Slytherins are 'good' and suddenly without prejudice but it is meant to present the possibility that in a world that is built to assume that nothing good can come out of Slytherin, they take care of their own and reform their boundaries as necessary, especially after the lesson learned from watching their parents colossally bungle up.
> 
> The point of this is in part to sustain and play with the unreliable narrator POV regarding the Slytherins that I felt the books (Harry, JKR) had and set the Slytherins up to 'tell' their victory story. Needless to say, these are my headcanons for the Slytherins during and post the Battle of Hogwarts. YMMV. 
> 
> Some of this may also be in conflict with information from Pottermore and other JKR website/interview sources.


End file.
